A lesson from the anime Haikyuu: A negative attitude can't help a team win

Hello video gaming and Otaku community.  I haven't posted in a while since it's the holidays. To be honest, no good games have came out in a while.  In the meantime, I have been marathon watching some of my favorite anime.

One anime that caught my interest for 10 hours straights was Haikyuu.  It's a show about an under-qualified athlete that has the hope of winning a national championship in men's volley.  The reason the show caught my interest was the psychology of sports and the character analysis.  

The antagonist of the show character analysis really made me evaluate some of my social interactions. The antagonist is nicknamed the "King of the Court".  The reason he has that nickname is due to his tendency to be a dictator and an attitude to push those on his team hard to meet impossible goals he can't achieve himself.  At one point during a tournament, he was so hard on his teammates that his team leaves him and abandons him during the game.  The coach of the team calls a timeout to bench the King of the Court, which forever changes him and makes him doubt himself.

As a result of his character flaws, he was blacklisted from top sports programs due his behavior and bad attitude. Due to his blacklisting, the King of the Court ends up on a bad team that is not a contender for the nationals but he's glad to still have the chance to play again.  When he came to the new team, the his captain prevented him from joining the team until the King of the Court overcame his character flaws despite his talent.  The captain's reasoning for this demand was an understanding that someone who thinks he's better than everyone else and uncooperative can never work well with a team.

The antagonist trained with the protagonist Hinata until he was able to let go of his pride, bad attitude and arrogance.  Eventually, the protagonist and antagonist became the stars of the team.  The two stars cooperation helps the team evolve from being underdogs to the national champions.  It's an amazing anime, and I highly recommend you watch a few episodes.

Dead Rising 4 Review - Dreaming of Red Christmas

"Rumors of human trials, psychopaths, illegal human experimentation, abandoned missile sites. How can you say no to this Frank ?  This is our change please!"

Frank West is back for Dead Rising 4, and he is kicking serious butt just in time for Christmas.  This time around Dead Rising puts you in a small town of Willamete, where you must use your journalism skills to uncover a scientific mystery, report your findings/evidence and save the world from another deadly zombie outbreak.  Dead Rising 4 is a fill good button masher mixed with a little over the top drama, challenges to overcome impossible odds, and utilizing your environment to be creative and dominate maniacs that want you dead or zombies that want you for a meal.

What's New?
Capcom nailed Frank's personality, bizarre charm, presentation and story.  Fundamentally, combat has not evolved nor the challenges from the three prior dead rising games.  The biggest change is the removal of the countdown timer which allows you to explore more and have fun without pressure to get everything done in 72 hours deadline.  The reason the developers removed the timer was because this dead rising world is dense and loaded with challenges to encourage you to have fun!  There are endless amounts of survivors to save, blueprints to find, and weapons/vehicles to craft.  A big bonus is you are no longer forced to seek out a workbench to craft your combo weapons or vehicles from the blueprints.  All you need to craft from blueprints are the required materials.

Photography plays more than a tool to level up. Frank's camera has new batman like filters that let you detect hidden clues, use night vision or take selfies. They borrowed the exo-suit from the call of duty series which will give you an advantages in hoards melee fights or maniac boss battles.  There are no longer stronger zombies at night.  They are replace with a fresh infected zombies that come out at all hours and they are faster, smarter and stronger.  You can't throw melee weapons anymore as well.

What's wrong?
If you are familiar with the Dead Rising series, then you know glitches are bound to happen.  Textures pop in and out, frame rates stutter, clipping and collision issues get annoying, new crafted vehicles are undriveable,  and you can fall through levels.  They drop the co-op player mode and replaced the mode with a multi-player mode.  It's good in theory but with glitch issues and lost connections, it can really make the game unplayable.

Overall
I feel Dead Rising always found a way to capture an audience share culture and break down walls of what is expected from a good game.  Instead of zombie outbreak/weapon, the experiments are used to mass produced unskilled labor to do mundane task like farming or manufacturing.   If you're a fan of Dead Rising, then you know what you're getting.  If you not a fan, then you aren't going to find a hidden gem here.  Dead Rising 4 is a care free, have fun, and laid back game with enough content to keep the story paces and side quest to challenge you.  I'm a fan of the series so I give Dead Rising 4 a 8.5/10